


Nightfall

by YoGrossDude



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Goodbyes, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:48:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27108229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YoGrossDude/pseuds/YoGrossDude
Summary: Written for the tumblr prompt "a lingering kiss before a long trip apart."
Relationships: Aloy/Erend (Horizon: Zero Dawn)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 81





	Nightfall

**Author's Note:**

> more of the spirit of the prompt than the letter of the prompt really lol but i Tried (TM)

There should be miles between her and Meridian by now. She should be taking her first strides past the Daunt into the heart of the Forbidden West, pushing through choking sandstorms and scorching heat and the hundred other threats lurking within its wastes. She should be just starting to piece together how to begin the impossible task of repairing an entire world.

She shouldn't be _here_.

It’s night, moonless, the lantern light around her weak and guttering, so late that even bustling Meridian is now quiet and empty. Despite how different it seems in the darkness, Aloy knows this place well — the green moss growing between the cracks in the stones of the street; the faint scent of warm spices that linger even now from the market; the gentle sound of rustling cloth from the banners hanging from a nearby rooftop. And she knows the worn wooden door set with wrought iron she’s staring at — has _been_ staring at, for far too long now. She’s been here…several times, though never this late before.

_This is a mistake._

Aloy firmly shoves the thought away, raising her fist until her knuckles are a hairsbreadth away from the wood — and then drops her hand with a frustrated sigh.

This is pointless. She _should_ just turn around and leave, climb onto the tamed Broadhead waiting for her outside the gates of the city, riding west until the sun rises behind her, until she’s finally where she needs to be. But her feet are rooted to the spot, an uncomfortable thickness in her throat that stays there even when she swallows twice.

 _I'm no good at endings,_ a ghost whispers in her ear.

It’s fitting, then, that she isn’t either. But she managed, somehow, telling the few who might need to know she’s leaving in a manner so awkward and fumbling she’d be grateful for a head wound to erase the whole scene from her mind. _A week from now_ , she told them all, just three days before, but then she started hearing words like _“feast”_ and _“celebration”_ and a cold discomfort began twisting up her insides.

It’s better for everyone — for her — to leave quietly, without any fanfare. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s left Meridian without saying a word, and she never regretted it then.

Why does she feel like she would now?

Staying here so long ( _too long_ ) probably has something to do with it. Six months of biding her time, trying to plan her next move, trying to find a place to even start, and yet there wasn’t any way she was simply going to _sit_ there. The machines continue to grow bolder, fiercer, with every passing day, new, vicious models wearing new arrays of weapons that pushed even Talanah’s best hunters to the limits of their abilities; bandits raid the trade roads between the Sundom and the Claim despite Avad’s efforts to increase the presence of his soldiers, building up fortresses of wood and metal to horde their stolen prizes. There was no shortage of dangers for the Vanguard to rush into head on and test their steel. It only made sense for her to help them for as long as she was here.

It only makes sense, then, for her to tell Erend she’s actually leaving tonight.

By knocking on his door. In the middle of the night. With no one else around.

Aloy clenches her jaw, pulls back her shoulders, raising her fist again, and this time she raps her knuckles against the wood three times.

And then she waits.

And waits.

Maybe he didn’t hear it? It’s late, after all; he’s probably been asleep for hours. An uneasy kind of relief pulls at her gut. This might work itself out, then. If he doesn’t answer, then the stupid, vague guilt that put her here in the first place should be satisfied. She can simply turn around and —

The door swings open. Their eyes meet.

The strength from whatever wild impulse finally compelled her to knock leaves her entirely, taking her breath with it.

"Aloy?" Erend's voice is hoarse and he looks _so tired_ , but he blinks himself alert, runs a quick hand over his face. “You okay?”

It’s impossible for her to answer. There’s too many distractions: his disheveled, messy hair; his chest partially exposed by the loose, low neckline of his shirt that keeps drawing her eye like a Sawtooth to sudden movement; the bleary concern in his eyes.

_What am I doing?_

"I need to talk to you,” she blurts, the words falling out in a rush, and now he looks _confused_. She balls her hands into tight fists at her sides, trying and failing to distract herself from the anxious churning of her stomach.

His brow is furrowed and he keeps warily checking behind her from his place at his door, like he’s waiting for a legion of Shadow Carja or enraged machines to leap out of the darkness. Like he’s looking for a _reason_ she would wake him up in the middle of the night, something that makes any sense at all, and Aloy does her best to ignore the prickling heat rising to her face.

“Okay,” he says, halting and uncertain. “What are we talking about?”

This is the whole point of her coming here — _isn’t it?_ — and it’s a struggle to even meet his eyes, to take her next breath, to say —

“I spotted a new Behemoth herd.” That is, unfortunately, the sound of her own voice, saying the _stupidest thing imaginable_ , but she can’t snatch the words back out of the air, so she presses on, the blood roaring in her ears. “They’re heading southwest. From Day’s Height. They'll probably be close to the roads by tomorrow.”

Erend blinks at her. She locks eyes with him, raising her chin, and does her best to pretend she doesn’t want the earth to open up beneath her and swallow her whole.

“I'll, uh, tell the boys to keep an eye out,” he says. There’s a dark, wiry patch of hair on his chest his shirt makes no effort to hide. She vaguely remembers Olin wearing something similar. She _doesn’t_ remember it being so hard to look anywhere else.

Erend, for his part, looks at her expectantly, like he’s waiting for her to continue, somehow explain whatever it is she’s doing right now. Unfortunately for them both, she doesn’t have an answer.

Eventually, when he finally figures out she isn’t going to say anything else, Erend tells her, “Thanks.” It’s almost a question.

“Sure,” Aloy chokes out, burning furiously from the inside out.

The long, awful silence that follows feels more painful than anything the Forbidden West could possibly hold.

"Um," Erend says, once an eternity has passed, "so was that — ?"

" _No_ ," she snaps, so harshly they both wince. She drops her gaze to the ground, softens her voice in apology. "No, that wasn't…everything I wanted to say."

The sound of a closing door has her look up just in time to see him step all the way out to meet her. He’s frowning, but it’s puzzled, not angry, and the restless fluttering in her belly freezes and flares at the same time when she realizes how close to her he is now.

“Talk to me.”

Aloy draws in a tight breath. “I told you I was leaving,” she says.

The slump of his shoulders is so slight she almost misses it. He nods.

She wants the words to be decisive, final, but she says them all too quietly to be either. “I’ve decided to leave tonight.”

Aloy watches his expression fall in time with the pit of her stomach.

“Oh.” He swallows, his eyes searching her face. “I thought…” He trails off. “Oh.”

He wants to ask her why she’s leaving so much earlier; that much is obvious. He wants to ask her where she’s going. If he can help. There’s easily a hundred questions glittering unspoken in his gray eyes, and Aloy feels herself tense, reluctantly readying the same flat denials for the ones she’s used to evading…but he doesn’t voice any of those.

“Well, you good on supplies then?” Erend asks instead. He says it with a casual ease that’s as expected as it is clearly forced — absurdly, it makes something twinge inside her chest. “You’re welcome to anything the Vanguard’s got.” A grin flickers across his face, too weak to be reassuring. “Maybe not the Scrappersap.”

“I have what I need,” she tells him. She pauses, probably for too long. “Thanks, though.”

“Sure.” He swallows again, rubs the back of his neck.

“You’ll be missed, you know,” he says, his voice unusually quiet, but that doesn’t stop the words slamming into her with all the force of taking a Trampler’s charge head-on. But when she blinks up at him with wide-eyed surprise, he hastily adds, “By the Vanguard, I mean.” He flashes her another feeble smile. “Rodsa told me they were trying to figure out how to convince you to go out with them one night to the Broken Anvil before you headed out.”

The Broken Anvil, an Oseram-owned tavern that proudly bore its dual reputation as both the loudest and safest one in Meridian thanks to its frequent patronage by the Vanguard, also had the rare honor of being a place Aloy had no intention of ever setting foot in.

The memory of an unpleasant earthy bitterness on her tongue is strong enough to make her frown even now. “Trying Oseram brew once was enough for me.”

He gives her an exaggerated shrug, clearly amused. “They’d all tell you it grows on you.”

“It won’t,” is Aloy’s immediate reply, and when Erend laughs, she feels the corners of her mouth twitch.

“You _will_ be careful out there, right?” The question is breezy, unbothered, but that doesn’t hide the real concern she can sense just underneath the words.

She can’t help raising an eyebrow at him. “Are you worried?”

He breathes a quiet laugh. “Maybe a little. It’s not like I’ve seen you put down a Metal Devil personally or anything.”

Aloy ducks her head for a moment in a vain attempt to hide her smile. “I’ll be careful,” she assures him, watching a minute bit of tension leave his shoulders. “Think you can keep Meridian in one piece while I’m gone?”

Erend puffs out his chest. “The Vanguard have it handled,” he tells her with a confidence that sounds slightly more than half-serious. “Wouldn’t want you to come back to a pile of rubble.”

Another silence falls between them, though this one doesn’t sting. In fact, it feels something close to comfortable.

That should be it, right? She said her last farewell, just like she wanted to, and yet Aloy can’t bring herself to leave.

Because she remembers standing over the still-sparking corpse of a Bellowback, turning to see Erend at her shoulder, the sun glinting off his armor, flushed and sweating and his face marked with dirt, his grin as pleased as it was broad. She remembers a warm pork bun gently pushed into her hands in the blue light of dawn, dragging her attention away from her Focus just long enough to take a bite and nod at him in thanks. And she remembers a slow, tired smile, Ersa’s worn helmet in his hands, watching the twilight settle over Meridian as she stood beside him in the Palace of the Sun.

A movement just out of the corner of her eye startles her out of her thoughts. It’s his hand, she realizes, reaching out for one of her own. He moves slowly, hesitantly, giving her plenty of time for her to pull away. She tenses, but doesn’t flinch when his fingers curl loosely around her own, even though the contact sends a tingling jolt lancing down her arm.

“Don’t stay away too long,” he says softly. He tries a grin, runs his thumb over her knuckles. “Not sure what I’d do without you.”

It’s a strange feeling, to be told that you’re wanted after a lifetime of being nothing but an Outcast. It feels wrong, somehow, despite even now that the Nora have hurried to forget all about the times they shunned her to proclaim her their Anointed; there’s still a part of her that wants to tell him that he’s making a mistake and just doesn’t realize it yet. She’s a plastic, motherless _copy_ of an extraordinary woman who died almost a thousand years before he was ever born, constructed within a metal womb inside a mountain, just like any other machine. She knows just enough to create an impassable rift between her and everyone else around her, and not nearly enough to figure out how to do what she was created to do: the repair of a broken, dying world — Elisabet’s gift, turned into _her_ burden. She’s something barely human, barely _here_ , separated from the rest of the world the moment she was "born," and even if Erend doesn't know all of it, she knows he can tell that much.

And he still wants her.

She doesn’t even realize she’s taken a shuffling half-step towards him until he fills her vision completely. It closes the space between them; she’s close enough now to catch the scent of him, woodsmoke and the faint hint of fresh steel; close enough to hear his sharp inhale; close enough she could press up against him, if she wanted to. His gaze drops from her eyes to her mouth before he catches himself, dragging his eyes back to meet her own, and she feels her lips part, heat rising on her skin.

“Erend.” It comes out low and breathy and strange. The air between them feels charged — taut, somehow — and that wild impulse returns, rising up within her until it’s too much to bear.

Aloy grabs fistfuls of his shirt, pulling him down towards her, and then she kisses him.

Or tries to, anyway. It's awful. All she really manages is mashing her mouth onto his so hard their teeth clack together. Embarrassment burns worse than blaze; she quickly retreats, her heart pounding against her ribcage, and Erend doesn’t even _move_ , frozen and statue-still. She’s doing it all wrong, she thinks, despairing — but Aloy tries again, softer this time, her eyes squeezed shut so she doesn’t have to see his face.

This time Erend tilts his head, and all at once everything changes.

The first press of his lips on hers is so soft she melts against him, and he kisses her again, and again, sharp and slow and sweet. She makes a noise without meaning to when she feels his hand splay against the space between her shoulders, the other cradling the back of her head, his fingers sliding into her hair. It's easier — _and so much better_ — now that she can try to match the way he does it, moving her mouth against his own, and the ice-and-fire shiver coursing through her blends with a new, unfamiliar ache low in her stomach.

Erend is the one who gently parts them before it all turns into too much, still staying close enough Aloy can feel his ragged breath on her skin, staring down at her with awed bewilderment, like he can’t believe she’s really there. She’s dizzy and breathless and burning, clutching his shoulders with trembling hands. He holds her close, a warm, solid comfort, calloused fingers of one hand stroking down her face.

“I can’t stay,” she whispers to both of them.

“I know,” Erend murmurs, and it stings like a wound. He leans his forehead onto hers with a sigh that makes her shudder. “I know.”

They stay like that, in the quiet dark, together, and for the first time in a long, long time, Aloy doesn’t think of promises she made to ghosts, or about the fragile world shattering itself apart. For a little while she doesn't think of anything at all, and moves to press her face against his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heart.

Erend plants a gentle kiss into her hair, and then another on her forehead, and his beard scrapes a little but Aloy finds she doesn’t mind at all. She can feel his faint smile against her skin. “But...do you have a minute?”

Aloy breathes a quiet laugh, pulling away just far enough to look up at him.

“I have two,” she says, and then her lips find his once more.


End file.
